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Mid-century Woman, 30 x 24 inches, acrylic on canvas.
Chasing the Light, 24 x 30 inches, acrylic on canvas.
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THOUGH THE SALT
MARSHES and the trees
at Fort Fisher spoke to
him, Schaefer is typically
more likely to paint por-traits
than landscapes. He
is increasingly interested in the interac-tions
between human and natural subjects
in his pieces.
“Sometimes when I’m painting people,
a lot of different people emerge; as I con-tinue
to work, they become something or
someone else from when I started,” he says.
“The painting undergoes a lot of meta-morphosis.
I hope it has the significance
of the original image, but still reflects my
interpretation.”
Many of his portraits also demonstrate
an interest in mid-century culture, phi-losophy
and life, and range from dramatic
or mysterious to domestic. They depict
famous boxers and musicians as well
as individuals who are not individually
recognizable.
One of these images, titled “Mid-Century
Woman,” depicts Schaefer’s subject in
shoulder pads and pearls, staring boldly
out at the viewer. In her green and navy
dress with dangerously bright red finger-nails,
the woman seems mysterious and
confident. With a cigarette in her hand and
an abstract painting hanging behind her,
the subject gazes with borderline disinter-est
at the viewer she knows is watching.
Schaefer more explicitly blends his
emerging interest in landscape and
human subjects in a recent painting titled
“Chasing the Light,” inspired by a photo
taken by a friend of a group of bike riders
on a cloudy spring day in Oregon. Though
it carries the same bright, primary color
palette and geometric brushstrokes of
his other work, this painting is softer. The
cloudy sky blends slowly into the waving,
brown and red grass, which seems to jerk
as quickly in the wind as the speedy bikers
split through it. It is simultaneously con-templative
and active.